copyright

[P3D Elliott Swanson <e3d@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dick Woods said:

"the market for the book).  Impossible?  Happens every day.  There are
even people who deal in copyrights.  They buy a copyright, find someone
infringing on it, sue for a huge amount, and settle out of court for a
big fraction of it.  Move on to the next suit."

Elliott responds:

Yes this practice is done all the time. However, it's almost always a
situation where the infringement is set up to raid the coffers of a large
deep pockets corporation. There generally isn't a sure enough guarantee of
return to sue some little guy doing reprints of out-of-print text on a
scale that George proposed. (BTW, anyone can copy things with impunity for
their own personal use if the original document is out of print and
unavailable at a "reasonable" price, according to section 106 of the
Copyright law. Just interlibrary loan it and fire up the copy machine.)

By far, the most common practice is to issue a cease and desist letter for
something on the level described by George.

I don't encourage people to break the law or deprive someone of income
from a viable intellectual property, and people do so at their own risk,
but let's get real here...


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